A key word: Advocacy. As I remember it, Arisia was founded with the idea that, given sufficient funds and within the constraints of facilities and logistics, almost any sf&f-related activity could be undertaken at the convention if enough people wanted it and were willing to organize it. This makes the organization more flexible and open to new ideas and people. I'm too far away to know whether and to what degree it calcified.

Arisia encourages people to mentor, to take lesser positions and to work on parts of the convention different from their usual. I stepped aside from the head of operations position to allow another interested person a crack at it. From what I've heard, this doesn't happen much with Boskone. If that's true, It can't go one forever (yeah, I'm reiterating).

I've only been to one Boskone. It was the Boskone From Hell. I've wanted to attend others (I like sercon) but I haven't been able to justify doing both Boskone and Arisia from this distance.